Here is the second marathon processing session by Noel.  This time it’s the Belt region of Orion. (more…)

Taken over several years this image is a composite of Hyperstar I, Sky 90 and Hyperstar III data. (more…)

Panic over.  It is not an alien race trying to get our attention (shame) - but an extremely variable, variable star!  This little beauty is WY Cas lying just below the open cluster NGC7789 in Cassiopeia, and Noel created the animation from two separate images taken over a year apart.  (more…)

Noel has just processed a Sky 90/M25C image of an open cluster.  We had already imaged the same cluster a couple of years earlier with the Hyperstar 1 and SXV-H9C.  One very faint very red star of around magnitude 13 shows up as a bright orange magnitude 7 star in the latest data.  We have identified the star as a variable which may undergo mag 2 variations - but a 6 mag change is a bit steep by anyone’s standards!  We are looking into this a bit deeper and have sent the data to an expert at the BAA.  Watch this space.  New discovery?  Quite possibly

In the December 2007 issue of Practical Astronomer the Editor (Eddie Guscott) interviews Greg Parker about his imaging from the New Forest Observatory and his collaboration with Noel Carboni via the Internet.

This is a 6-page interview and makes the magazine worth purchasing :-)  

Our thanks to Eddie and the rest of the team at Practical Astronomer for taking the time to interview us, it was a great experience.

The images below are the same as some of those in the article

If you are a reader of The Express then you might have seen a half page article on page 23 of Bank Holida Monday’s Express.  Ok, so the picture doesn’t do me any favours [thanks for the suggestions about supporting garments Noel!].

Tom Price wrote the article and he suggested the highlights: it is amazing what you can achieve from your garden [and we are really pleased with the results we are getting] and anyone can do this with very basic kit and a bit of patience.

However, Tom obviously got some of the information from an earlier interview I did with the Daily Mail.  The main problem I have with the article is that he mentions the amount of £10,000!  Well, yeah, I probably have spent just under that amount over the last three years but that covers just about everything over that period.

The value of the equipment that I use is not particularily high.  In fact, I think one of the most expensive items was the concrete base to bolt the telescope onto!

As most of you know, you can spend just about any amount you like on the equipment but in reality you can start getting great images with relatively low cost gear.  We will be posting some “getting started” articles in the near future so make sure you keep an eye out for those.  Also, we cover how to set up and take images like ours in the book “Making Beautiful Deep-Sky Images”.

The picture in the article is one of our images of M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy [shown here because it is a great picture!]

Our picture of M51 appears on page 48 under the article heading “Beginner’s Challenge: The spiral arms of M51.  Our image of M13 and M101 also appear on the Messier Challenge Poster - these are all single frame Hyperstar/SXV-H9C images.

Astronomy Now are printing one of our images of M31 in “the night sky” on page 51.  It is certainly a dramatic image and one of our favourites.  This is just the central core region of M31 taken with the Hyperstar/SXV-H9C - BUT - it contains 311 sub-exposures!!

Faith Eckersall has written an article titled “Shining Example” for the March issue of the Hampshire Society Magazine. 

A lot of the article is about Greg’s background which you also can read on this site.  The article has been published with one of our favourite images - the region between NGC1977 and M43 in Orion taken using the Hyperstar/SXV-H9C combination.

We have three images in the 2007 yearbook :

Page 38 is the 4 frame Hyperstar image of M31 as one of the top 10 images of 2006

Page 72 is a Hyperstar image of M13 as a summer object

Page 97 has the Virgo Cluster as “deep sky delights”